Drowning in Bad Leads? Here’s An Experiment That Fixed It For Me
But probably won't for you.
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Diagnosing the Funnel Breakdown
I’ve been thinking a lot about intent lately specifically, what happens when the signals I think I'm getting turn out to be noise.
One example that sticks with me is from my time at Route, where a surprisingly high volume of consumers were submitting the merchant demo request form.
The form was built for prospective merchants interested in my B2B offering.
But week after week, the sales team was buried in low-quality leads.
Meanwhile, actual consumers people trying to track packages or resolve issues were hitting a wall. No one was winning. Not the sales team. Not the user.
I needed a fix. But more than that, I needed to understand what was really happening at that critical moment of intent.
The Experiment
So, I put together a scrappy landing page. Instead of letting users go straight to the demo form, I added a simple decision point: “Are you a merchant or a consumer?”
If they said merchant, they got the original form.
If they said consumer, I showed them four clear options: track a package, download the app, file a claim, or read the FAQ.
The build was quick and intentionally rough. The goal wasn’t polish, it was clarity.
What I Expected
I figured a majority of these form submissions weren’t real leads.
They were people confused about where to go or what the form was for.
If I could route them correctly, I could reduce noise in the pipeline and improve the experience for consumers.
What Happened
The experiment ran for just a few days. Here’s what I saw:
11% drop in consumer submissions
18% increase in merchant submissions
Before: 143 total submissions, 89 from consumers (62%)
After: 101 total submissions, 56 from consumers (55%)
Cleaner data. Better intent match. And for the first time in months, the sales team could focus on the right leads. Admittedly not the biggest sample size, but I had to move fast and leading indicators was enough to take action.
Consumer Click Behavior:
46% “Track a package”
32% “Download the app”
10% “File a claim”
3% “FAQ”
7% “Other” (spam)
It was clear with these results, these users weren't trying to talk to sales. They just didn’t know where else to go.
A Second Lens: Brand Ad Traffic
I ran the same flow on brand campaign traffic. That gave me a fresh look at ad intent:
82% clicked “Track a package”
7% clicked “File a claim”
10% clicked “Merchant demo”
This told me two things:
I was attracting the wrong audience.
Even when people clicked a demo ad, many of them were just confused consumers.
Where I Took It From There
Armed with these insights, I made three key moves:
Working with our Paid team, we adjusted targeting and messaging to filter better-qualified traffic.
I partnered with the Consumer Marketing team to start building the resources consumers were actually looking for.
I rolled out a permanent experience that asked users if they were merchants or consumers, effectively implementing the winning version of the test.
Why It Mattered
This test didn’t just clean up a form. It revealed a deeper truth about intent misalignment. Sales was wasting time. Consumers were getting ignored. And both issues stemmed from the same problema lack of clarity at the top of the funnel.
What worked wasn’t fancy. Just a quick page, a clear question, and a willingness to follow the data.
If you’re seeing conversion but not quality, check intent. That’s where the story usually starts.
Dan